A month ago we introduced you to the wonderful second album by singer/songwriter Dave Giles, called Tennessee and 48th, a piece of Americana tinged rock featuring some of my favourite songs of 2018 – our review can be read here. We recently caught up with Dave, fresh from the success of his sold out album release shows to tell us all about the songs that make up Tennessee and 48th – enjoy!
1. Child Again
This is a song about my nan who had dementia. We were lucky in some ways because it never got to the point where she didn’t recognise us completely, sometimes it would take a few moments, but she’d get there soon enough. It’s a horrible, horrible disease. My nan was in a home for the last two years of her life, and every time we visited she’s always tell us multiple times, “it’s very clean in here” – I think it was one of the things she’d just say because it was her way of controlling the conversation so she didn’t have to remember anything. Although the moment you got her talking about the old days, she’d be able to remember so much.
2. Shoebox
I got to November last year and having raised nearly £18000 to record an album, I had yet to start writing any songs. I had a list of things I wanted to write about but hadn’t the time to do it. I was looking to go on some kind of retreat to get some time away and get it started, but I didn’t want to spend any money. In the end, I went back to my parents house while they were away on holiday and made a make shift demo studio. Foolishly I told my dad I’d be home for a few days, and he got a few boxes of stuff down from the loft and asked me to go through them. They’re in the process of downsizing for their retirement, so I understand, except it gave me ample of excuses to procrastinate.
It was fascinating to see all the things I’d just put in the loft when I left home aged 19. The internet still wasn’t that big back then, so I still had loads of newspaper clippings of anything related to space. There was also a load of photos from when I was in air cadets and from my church youth group trips. I couldn’t remember the names of half the people in them, but there they were. The days before social media! There was a year planner from the year 2000. I was 14/15 that year, and my nan got me the planner for Christmas. I’d decided I was going to fill it in every day to keep a record of the millennium. Unfortunately it had no emotional input at all, it was just a minute account of what I’d got up to. The only thing that was remotely amusing about it, was at the end of each month there was a notes section where I kept a tally chart of the different alcoholic drinks I’d drunk that month. So, what I thought was going to be a distraction, ended up giving me a song!
3. Whiskey and Daffodils
The love song, although we’ve now split up since recording the song. I was with someone for six years, and she wanted to do all the “normal” things that we’re brought up believing we have to do to be a success; buy a house, get married, have kids etc. To me, those things are less important, or not important at all. I want to achieve something with my life too. However, I did try to compromise and we made some plans, but as always those things require money, and I’m a self employed musician who wants to invest all the money he makes into making an album in Nashville…I think you can see where it went wrong. So the song is basically me trying to tell her that life is more than those things. To quote John Lennon, sometimes all you need is love, but I guess in reality that’s not actually true.
4. Devil In A Green Dress
So many of my favourite song writers have a song about a woman called Mary or Mary Jane, so I wanted to do that for myself. I’m a Spiderman fan as well, so the idea made sense to me. I told a friend of my about my plan and he said “You do know what Mary Jane is?” to which I replied “No, I thought it was just a nice name to put into a song. Turns out Mary Jane is another term for marijuana, which makes a lot of sense when I look back at all those Mary Jane songs I love. I decided to write the song anyway with the perspective of “she’s not the girl I thought she was.” I’ve never been a drug person. I’ve tried a couple of things, but on the whole it’s not something I’m interested in. I’m happy sticking to a few drinks. Despite this I’m firmly on the “legalise everything” side of the argument, but that’s probably a talk for another day.
So when I sat down to write this, I was trying to think of how, a non drug user could do a drug song. I’d just been on tour in Germany, and the first night there I ended up in a lock in with the staff at the bar I’d played at. I was trying to fit in and get involved, but they were talking a lot of German. So when they invited me to partake in their recreational activities, I did, and I definitely regretted it when I went to sleep that night with the dreams…! So it’s a song about temptation and how that can be enhanced when you’re alone in a foreign environment.
5. Just Another No One
For a singer-songwriter, going to Nashville to make an album is like an actor or actress going to Hollywood to became a star. I was aware that I’m just another person trying to have a go at doing this, and I wanted to write that song. As much as I do write from personal experience, I’ve very rarely written about being a musicians. I’m what’s referred to as a lifer. I’m always going to be trying to make a career out of music, I’m not going anywhere. It’s hard, it’s a slog sometimes, it’s antisocial, but I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else and that’s what this is about.
6. The Last Man on the Moon
In January 2017, Gene Cernan passed away. He is currently the last person to have walked on the moon. I’m a huge geek about space travel. I love it. Particularly the Apollo era. Gene flew three flights, Gemini 9, Apollo 10 and his moon walking flight Apollo 17. The Apollo 10 capsule is in the Science Museum in London. It’s the only American spaceship which isn’t in America. Apollo 10 was the dress rehearsal flight for the first moon landing, so it has a lot of historical significance. It also travelled faster than any human being has travelled before or since (I don’t know why this one went faster than any of the other 8 manned trips to the moon). The Science Museum has a pretty cool space flight area, with a load of miniatures and replicas, and even a piece of moon rock, but for some reason, the Apollo 10 capsule isn’t in that section, it’s down the corridor with just a tiny sign in front of it. They’re really not doing it justice at all.
The day that Gene died I went down to the capsule to pay my respects. I took a flower and thought there’d be a few people doing it, but I appeared to be the only one. I was really angry when I got there because the museum had made no effort to inform anyone that one of the astronauts who flew that historic ship had died. It wouldn’t have been a hard thing to do, and the human interest story could have inspired someone to talk a closer look. I went home and I put on a documentary about Gene on Netflix called “The Last Man On The Moon” – I’d watched this many times before, but this time it was even more emotional. He was in the third group of astronauts, he was the second American to walk in space, he’s one of 12 people to have walked on the moon, he’s one of only three people to have flown to the moon twice. And yet most people have never heard of him. These astronauts put their bodies and lives on the line to try and do something to inspire people, and most people don’t care.
They did it, because President Kennedy made a speech in 1961 saying they would do it by the end of the decade, even though the technology didn’t exist and the money required would be huge. Within that speech he quoted Edmund Mallory who was one of the first people to try and climb Everest in the 1920s and died tried to do so. He was asked why he wanted to climb Everest and he said “because it’s there”. I also feel like this whole thing inspires me to do things which I shouldn’t be able to do. I have a small audience, and yet I was able to raise £25000 to make an album in Nashville. I’ve sold out venues that I had no right to even hire, and I’m always looking to push myself. Those astronauts can inspire anyone. Watch the documentary.
7. Who I Wanna Be
The internet is a wonderful thing, and over the last few years it’s become apparent that I’ve not been the good person that I thought I was. I had no idea about the entrenched misogyny that was in my outlook. I didn’t mean any harm by it, but it was doing harm. When it was first pointed out to me, I was very defensive about it, but the journey has been long and it continues. I want to be the best version of myself I can be, not just with my career and achievements, but with my actions and how I treat others.
I went to a Catholic boys school in the late 90s/early 00s and there are a lot of things that went on both in the classroom by the teachers to the pupils and in the playground from peer to peer, that no one challenged. It was just how it was, and most of us didn’t even realise there was anything wrong with it. I’ve many demons that I’m still exorcising and will continue to. I’m 33 and until this year I had never told anyone about my true sexuality despite having many friends of different orientations and being around accepting people. I don’t actually think it’s anyone’s business but my own, and won’t do a big public post about it, because I don’t want anyone to think that I’m trying to use my sexuality to get publicity, but I am starting to talk about it finally amongst my close friends. The ongoing struggle to be oneself in a world where everyone has an opinion on who you should be.
8. Taken Too Soon
Taken Too Soon is about a girl who used to come to my gigs, she saw me about 40+ times. She didn’t live too far from me, so if I had out of town gigs that I was driving to and from in a day then I’d ask her and some of her friends if they fancied a road trip. Obviously we became pretty good friends. At the end of 2014 I was pretty drained from years of self promotion and touring, and I was contemplating giving it all up.
At the start of 2015 I got a phone call from a friend telling me that Kayleigh had dropped down dead at work, aged 21. I was asked by her family (her mum and I had been friends since she arranged for me to sing at one of Kayleigh’s birthday parties a few years earlier) to sing at the funeral and I did, toughest gig ever. After that I spent a few months wondering why the hell I’d even contemplate given this up. I love doing what I do, and despite a small audience, I’ve built up a wonderful little community of people who come to my shows and they’re all a huge part of my life. I experience their highs and lows as much as they experience mine. It’s a very different career to what I thought it would be when I was 18 and dreamed of being a rock star, but it’s so rewarding. So I wrote this song about Kayleigh.
9. No One Knows
It was the end of 2013 and my girlfriend at the time slept with someone else on December 30th and told me the following day. It was pretty horrendous, I’d never experienced anything like that before. In the following month I wrote four songs which were very direct about what had happened and released them as The Taylor Swift EP (a light hearted title because Taylor Swift writes good break up songs.) Halfway through that year we got back together again and only recently broke up.
We worked through the demons and problems and built up the trust again, and the recent break up was just because we’d grown apart. After we got back together I stopped singing the songs from The Taylor Swift EP. I felt that it wasn’t something I wanted to relive, especially as it was so direct. I also felt like I’d probably not taken my own flaws into consideration when I wrote it. I hadn’t been a perfect boyfriend, I hadn’t cheated, but I’d broken up with her twice and then got back together with her, I put a lot of things before her, and probably didn’t make her feel great. So in some regards, it’s no surprise that she ended up doing what she did (something she regrets deeply and sincerely). So I wrote this song, to try and write the song about what happened that should have been written in the first place, one that I’d feel comfortable singing if someone requested a song from The Taylor Swift EP.
10. Demons
The weird thing about this job is that I’ve made so many friends. When I started out as a musician, social media wasn’t a thing. As a music fan you had no way of getting information about the people you loved, unless it was in a press statement or interview, and there was definitely a “them” and “us” thing going on. My career has got me to the point where I tend to know the names of everyone who is at one of my gigs, and I know what most of them do, and about some of their extended families. I’ve been through their highs and their lows, and I’ve learnt so much from everyone. This song is my love song towards the audience I have, the friends I’ve made in that audience, and my way of saluting them for the grace and strength in which they face their struggles. It’s my favourite track on the album for numerous reasons.
